Today was the first beautiful day we’ve enjoyed in Valencia for weeks, and we spent it at the beach with friends (including baby). The forecast for the next few days is looking excellent. Sunny, Sunny, Sunny, Sunny, Partly Cloudy, Sunny, Sunny. Is the Valencian summer here to stay?

We’ve been anticipating the arrival of summer with a mixture of excitement and dread… oppressive heat is worse than freezing cold. But the maximum temperature during the next 7 days is forecast to be 25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) — that’s tolerable!

This our first summer in Valencia — are we right to be nervous? Should we schedule an August vacation in Sweden?

Also … if you have a baby and would like to get some nice portraits such as the one above, send us a note! Juergen is a talented portraiture photographer, and available for hire. He always manages to get great shots of kids.

UPDATE: We spoke too soon! Sunday saw the re-arrival of nasty, rainy weather. The rain has just strengthened, today, and the streets are full of water. Suck!

Fly all you want for €249 from July 1st to August 31st within Europe. You can take advantage of this offer if you’re a student of 26 years or younger.

There are a limited number of all you can fly tickets available (3333). If you’re eligible you can buy one of them now and start booking your flights for the 2 month time frame on June 26th.

Now the catch - so far, this offer is only accessible from the German and Italian versions of the site. I hope they’re working on translating it into English and Spanish, and have emailed them to find out more.

Not sure how well the Google Translator helps but this offer is not to be missed.

Link: Tui - All you can fly

Related post: Airlines at Valencia’s Airport

More than a hundred festivals celebrating the legendary battles between the Moors and Christians take place every year across Spain. The largest and most popular of these occurs in the beautiful Valencian mountain town of Alcoy.

Source: Trianita @ Flicker

Alcoy’s festival takes place on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of April. The first day is focused on processions, the second is dedicated to Saint George, and the third day sees noisy and chaotic recreations of the battle. The events are based loosely on King Jamie I’s victorious Battle of Alcoy in the 13th century.

At first, the festival’s name led me to believe that it celebrated the once-peaceful coexistence of the Christians and Moors (peaceful, at least, while under Moorish rule). I should have known better. Without trying to get too political, the existence of such a festival makes me wonder if a full healing of the rift between Arabs and Christians is even possible in southern Spain. I mean, the festival’s message is, “Hooray, we whooped your moorish ass”. How many centuries do we have to wait, before the bad blood evaporates? Or is Alcoy just throwing a fun party, to which I’m attributing too much meaning?

Source: Trianita @ Flicker

Unfortunately, we’re not going to make it this year to the fiesta, due to prior engagements. But Alcoy definitely seems to be worth a visit, fiesta or no fiesta. It has 60,000 inhabitants and is gorgeously nestled among a few mountain ranges. A day in the city & a day hiking around the mountains sounds like a pretty perfect weekend. From Valencia city, there is a bus which takes about an hour and 20 minutes, and costs €7.75 (more information here)

Link: Alcoyfoto.com - Photos of Alcoy
Link: Alcoy.es - Alcoy’s webpage, with a ton of information (Spanish)
Location on our Valencia Map

This will be old news to our readers already living in Valencia, but perhaps not if you’re new or a foreign visitor to the city. It took us 6 weeks of living in here before we realized we shouldn’t be paying €1.30 per ticket. We are complacent, and €1.30 is a cheap fare. We didn’t consider the possibility that you can easily pay less than half that.

So, it’s worth briefly examining the options. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll just consider trips taken within the A zone (city center):

1) Full-Price, One-Way - €1.30 - The Sucka Option
This is what we’ve been buying for the last month! Don’t do it, unless it really makes sense.

2) Return Trip - €2.20 - 15% Savings
There-and-back. It has to be used immediately. Not available at all vending machines (the ones in Colón, for instance) so you might have to ask for it.

3) Bonometro - €6.10 - 53% Savings
The Bonometro card is good for 10 journeys, and is valid forever (or until rates change). Sweet! A similar card called the B-10 offers 10 journeys on the Metro (Zone A), with change-overs to bus, for €7.00.

4) TAT Card - Unlimited Use
The TAT cards offer unlimited use of the Metro and can purchased monthly or yearly. You have to get some sort of MetroValencia ID Card. The price for the monthly card is €60.40 and it’s good for all 4 zones of the metro. That’s expensive, and I can’t imagine it’s worth it unless you’re traveling to Zone D a lot. In that case, the break-even number of trips is 17.

There is a different monthly card, called the Abono Transporte, which is valid for a smaller number of zones. It also allows you to use the bus and MetroBus (whatever that is), and costs €35.60 (for just Zone A).

The yearly card costs €317, and is available for differing numbers of zones. There are also special rates for youths and senior citizens, but we won’t go into that, as such people are too young/old to be reading a blog like this. Go outside and play fútbol/bocci!

5) T-1 - Day Pass
The confusingly named T-1 card lets you take an unlimited number of metro and bus trips during one day. It costs €3.30, so becomes worth it if you plan on taking more than 2 trips.

We don’t take the Metro too often, but from now on will be opting for the bonometro card. €0.61 per trip is tough to beat. Is Valencia’s underground the cheapest in the developed world?

Link: MetroValencia - Description of Tarifs
Link: MetroValencia - Table of Fares
PDF: Network Map

J-List is a peaceful island of Japanese pop culture for you

After being stranded in Western Ireland for more than a year, having a city airport like Manises (location) is extremely exciting. It’s the most easily-accessible airport I’ve ever been to… for a €1.80 fare on the subway (take the red or green line), I can be from my house to check-in within 25 minutes. Another great thing about Manises is that they offer free Wi-Fi. I expect we’ll often be making use of Manises, so have done some research on airlines that fly in and out of Valencia:

Discount Airlines

The only way to go for quick weekend trips! Ordered here by how useful I figure they’ll be to us.

Ryan Air - The undisputed king of discount flying. From Valencia, they fly to a lot of locations covering most of Western Europe: Portugal, Ireland, England, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and 4 cities in Italy.

Vueling ES - This company is new to me, and is based out of Barcelona. Their fares are low and from Valencia, they fly to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Milan & Sevilla.

airberlin - Obviously, they fly to our old hometown of Berlin, as well as a lot of other destinations all over the German-speaking countries. They also serve some spots in Spain, such as Palma, as well as Copenhagen, Milan, Amsterdam and Lisbon.

Wizz Air Hungary - The only discount airline I could find that frequently flies to Eastern Europe: Bucharest, Transylvania, Sofia and also Milan.

Air Europa - They fly to a few vacation spots within Spain, as well as Paris.

EasyJet - I’m really disappointed with EasyJet’s presence in Valencia — they only serve London & Bristol.

Lagunair - Two spots in Spain: León and Valladolid.

Transavia - Just Amsterdam.

TUIfly - Only flies directly to Germany (Memmingen, Stuttgart, Köln/Bonn and Hannover). Maybe worth looking into booking a connecting flight from Köln/Bonn since from there they fly to most destinations in Europe.

Major/National Carriers

In addition to the discount airlines, there are a lot of flights from the more well-known national carriers, especially Iberia. The other airlines I noticed which fly from Valencia are Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa and Spanair. The prices with these airlines aren’t necessarily much higher — I found a one-way flight to Pamplona for less than €50 with Iberia. Are there any airlines or routes I’ve missed? Share your travel tips in the forum!

In Valencia, Libreria Patagonia is the only bookstore you’ll ever need for maps, travel guides or hiking supplies. I stumbled upon this wonderful shop last week, and nearly dropped a hundred euros. Trembling, I forced myself to set down the stack of maps and books I had gathered, and left empty-handed.

3 days later I came back and emptied my wallet

The shelves are full of books about Valencia and the surrounding area. There’s an entire section just for books on the Pyrenees. And the whole back wall is stacked with travel guides.

Slobber

The shop is found in the city center, at Calle Hospital, 1 (location) Their website exists, but is still under construction.

Juergen and I caught the hiking bug during our time in Ireland, so I have a feeling we’ll be frequent patrons of Libreria Patagonia.

Hello, this is Jürgen, the second author of Valencia Blog. I arrived yesterday to my new hometown and wanted to say “Hi”. I’m excited to finally jump into action. So far Mike has been doing all the posts, but that’s going to change now.

With the move to Spain, I’m probably going to neglect my Ireland Blog a little, but will try to make readers of both sites happy.

Here are some pictures I took yesterday while flying over the Pyrenees on the way to Valencia.

Breathtaking!